Doherty listed forward, already red in the face from the stress position I’d put him in. “Someone’s following me.”
“So?”
“Gotta be feds.”
I snorted. “Why? What’s so important about you?”
“What if they think I’ll talk?”
“About what? You’ve been here a long time, but you’ve never mattered more than the piss stains on the wall.”
“I know shit. YouknowI do.”
“All I know about you is that you raise hands to little girls and let your thick-as-shit gene pool bring blades into the ring cos they can’t handle one brother between three of them.”
I mean, it wasRanger, but that was beside the point.
“I didn’t hit that kid.”
That kid.
Ivy.
We’d been through this, me and Doherty, so lucky old me had got to learn he’d known better than to lunge for Liliana.But with Folk silent and violent behind me, I didn’t feel like going over it again. “Why do you think you’re being followed?”
“Can hear it, can’t I? On the road and over the house every night this bloody week. Maybe it’s mafia. Like that Sambi?—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Doherty snapped his lips together while I brooded on the words I’d let him speak and the ones I’d cut off.Sambini. Far as I knew, there were none of those fuckers left, at least none that gave a shiny shit about us. But we’d been enemies a long time. It made sense that Doherty had heard their name and remembered it.
It madenofucking sense he thought they knew his. I dialled deeper into what he’d actually said.On the road and over the house.Far as I knew, he didn’t have a fucking house—his missus liked me more than she liked him and she’d booted him out.
Has to be living somewhere...
Though by the look and smell of him, it was somewhere without a bath.“What do you meanoverthe house? The fuck does that mean?”
“Dunno. Fucking drone or something.” Doherty wrung his bloated hands, his bloodshot eyes wide with a fear I realised was real. “I can feel it chasing me. Hear it in the night, like it’s buzzing the roof, shaking the ground. They’re gonna kill me, I know they are.”
“The feds?” I laughed. “Sounds like you’ve pissed them off more than I ever have.”
“The maf?—”
“No.” I snatched the nearest chair and hurled it, aiming for the space beside Doherty, scaring the fuck out of him rather than battering him. That shit was too easy. “You’re fucking scum. You’renothing. There’s no reason for any cunt to be wasting their time stringing out the end of your miserable life. You think a drone’s chasing your hog? Bury your keys and get checked for dementia. Now get the fuck out of my face.”
Doherty knew me better than to open his fat mouth again. He staggered to his feet and made for the door, almost gone before Folk stayed him.
“It’s dark out there, isn’t it? In the woods, in that old caravan.”
Doherty tripped, turning his head to where Folk had stepped out of the shadows. “All I got, ain’t it?”
“For now.” Folk folded his body into the seat that belonged to Mateo—by chance or choice, I was too thick to tell.
He said nothing else.
Doherty stared.
Folk stared right back, and I shivered, cos honest to God, I’d have rather fought Alexei at this point.